


Red Right-Handed Murder

by laiqualaurelote



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Crossover, Established Relationship, F/M, Gangsters, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, London, Murder Mystery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:33:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28021722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laiqualaurelote/pseuds/laiqualaurelote
Summary: There are many things Jack hates about England. The weather, for one. The food. The fact that Phryne’s parade of "old friends" includes the gangster king of Birmingham, who is not above hiring a woman to do his dirty work. Has he mentioned the weather?In which Tommy Shelby asks his ex - and her reluctant Inspector in tow - to solve a murder he didn't commit, for a change. An MFMM x Peaky Blinders crossover
Relationships: Grace Burgess/Tommy Shelby, Past Phryne Fisher/Tommy Shelby, Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 61





	Red Right-Handed Murder

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set after Miss Fisher S3 (not taking into consideration the film, which I have yet to see, and set mostly post-Phryne/Jack reunion) and between S2 and S3 of Peaky Blinders. The obvious problem is, of course, the timeline: Phryne flies off to London in 1929, while the events of the Epsom Derby occur in 1922. Is it 1922 or 1929 in this fic? Both? Neither? I have no idea. I suppose I basically sent one of my ships back in time to save another.
> 
> Even though these two shows are set in the 1920s, they are extraordinarily difficult genres to meld. While writing this fic, I listened to a great deal of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds alternating with 1920s jazz, which is some musical whiplash, I can tell you.
> 
> Content warnings for: gang-related violence, murder, suicide, PTSD, infidelity, unplanned pregnancy, drug use, kidnapping, period-typical sexism, chain-smoking and a great deal of profanity - all standard Peaky Blinders fare.

Phryne walks into the gang fight because she is distracted. 

It’s books she’s in Holborn for, and they’re waiting for her in an unassuming brown package under the counter at The Progressive Bookshop. She trips past the sign in the street with a filthy, waterlogged copy of Das Kapital pinned to it, underneath which are chalked the words “THIS IS THE ONLY DIRTY BOOK WE SELL”, and into the musty cubicle that is the bookshop proper, which looks like it could not fit more than six people but somehow always seems to hold at least a dozen. The anarchists are clustered in the back, fomenting dissent over their afternoon vittles, and Esther Archer is watching them from the counter with an eyebrow crooked. The bookshop was Esther’s to begin with, though the anarchists came in a package with her husband Charles Lahr. 

“And where is Mr Lahr?” Phryne asks as Esther hands her her books. 

“Off on some secret mission at the printers to do with Mr Lawrence’s latest,” says Esther, and winks. “Been a while since you graced the streets of High Holborn, Miss Fisher.”

“I’m sure I’ve not been missed,” says Phryne gaily. She should bring Jack here, she thinks, for all that he’d look askance at the anarchists - and then is startled by her own thought. It happens often these days - she’ll see a book in a window or hear a quip in the street and think, _Jack would like that_. And she never used to do that, because Jack was always within reach. She’s been in London a month and is beset every day by the keen awareness of the distance between them. It’s frightening. Phryne does not know what to do with herself.

It is thus in absent contemplation that she steps into Red Lion Street and into the brawl that has suddenly erupted, and she only notices when someone goes flying into the wheelbarrows behind her and someone else pelts after him with a roar to pummel him into the cobblestones. _Holborn is exciting these days_ , thinks Phryne, trying to sort out the different camps - some are shouting in Italian and some are wearing peaked caps, and she supposes that’s good enough to go on. She wonders if she should reach for her pistol, though the package of books under her arm makes it awkward. While she’s thinking, one of the men whips off his cap and slices the peak of it across the face of his assailant. A spray of blood arcs through the air and just misses the toe of Phryne’s shoe.

“Excuse me,” says the man with the razor in his cap, and Phryne has to stifle a laugh at how incongruously gentlemanly he sounds, given the circumstances, and then he does a double take and says: “Phryne? Phryne Fisher?”

“Why,” cries Phryne, “Tommy Shelby, as I live and breathe! Fancy meeting you here.”

“Indeed,” says Tommy. He looks exactly as good as she remembers - a haircut that would look appalling on any other man but is utterly sensible on him, a jawline you could sharpen a knife on. She devotes a handful of seconds to admiring it and quite forgets where she is, until someone charges her with a shiv. 

Phryne sidesteps it on instinct and Tommy grabs the man by his wrist, twisting the blade out of his grip and driving an elbow into his throat in the same motion. He kicks the shiv away, then its wielder in the head for good measure. “Arthur,” he says to a tall man with a fearsome mustache nearby, “think you can wrap things up around here? I’ll see this lady home.”

“Right,” growls Arthur, and returns his attention to putting someone’s skull repeatedly into a wall, punctuating this with “ _Don’t - fuck - with - the - Peaky - Blinders!_ ”

“You mustn’t put yourself out on my account,” says Phryne as Tommy fits his cap back on. “I’m quite capable of walking home on my own - I don’t expect there’s a fracas at every intersection.”

“It’s no trouble,” says Tommy, taking her package from her courteously. “And Arthur needs to have his head.”

Mostly so he can introduce it to other heads with enormous force, thinks Phryne, but she takes Tommy’s arm and they head up the street in the direction of Russell Square.

“What’s all that about?” Phryne demands.

“Business,” says Tommy. “Wrapping up some loose ends while I’m in town. You look well, Phryne. I hear you’re an Honourable now.”

“Only in name,” says Phryne. “As titles go it’s rather misleading.”

“Look at you,” he says. “A far cry from your Paris garret, eh?”

The last time she saw Tommy Shelby, he’d been sitting in the window of the garret smoking, the moonlight dappling his body, still gaunt from the trenches. He was going to be demobbed at dawn, or so he reckoned - Paris was a constant melee in those days right after the war, everyone drinking and rutting in the alleys and attics to take the edge off not knowing when they might be sent home. When she asked him to come back to bed, he shook his head and jerked his chin at the wall; she’d spent enough nights with him by then to know what that meant, that he was hearing the digging again, the picks of the German sappers tunnelling through brick and stone. She fell asleep watching the embers of his cigarette glow in the dark. When she woke in the morning he was long gone, headed for Calais in a cattle truck, and she knew she would never see him again, not even if she made it back to England - she would never write or look him up in Birmingham. Now it is a habit, the leaving, but back in Paris it took learning. In her narrow bed, she curled herself around the knowledge of it, then stretched and got up to scrounge for breakfast.

Now there’s a cigarette hanging from Tommy’s lips again, and he’s cupping his hands to shield the flame from the implacable weather. “Where’d you go, after Paris?”

“All over,” says Phryne. “I’m in Melbourne these days, mostly, though I find myself parked in London for a stretch. And you - I thought you were all set up in Birmingham?”

“I have business interests in London,” says Tommy vaguely.

“Looks like you took someone else’s business interests,” says Phryne slyly. “And they’d like to take them back. Is it Darby Sabini or the Cortesi brothers who run this part of town? You must forgive me, I’ve been away and it’s so hard to keep track.”

Tommy glances at her, the ghost of a smile crooking his lip. “Neither, you’ll find. The area’s under new management. You should come to Birmingham someday - we’ll show you a grand time.”

“What’s Birmingham got to recommend?”

“The races, I suppose,” says Tommy, “and every pub will stand you a pint if they know you’re with me.”

“Charming,” says Phryne. “I must pencil in a trip. Ah, this is me.”

Tommy takes a drag on his cigarette, appraising her parents’ townhouse with a shrewd eye. “You’ve done very well for yourself, Nurse Fisher,” he says.

“I could say the same for you, Sergeant Major.” On an impulse, Phryne hands him her card. Tommy scans it. “Private detective, eh?”

Phryne winks at him. “I’m very discreet. Though I don’t suppose there’s much call for that, in your line of work.”

“You’d be surprised.” He tips his cap to her. “Good day, Phryne.”

Phryne casts a last lingering look at his cheekbones as he turns to go, but then she’s back in the cool of the hallway and there’s a telegram on the bureau from Jack to say that he’s got through the Suez Canal, and all in all Phryne Fisher does not give Thomas Shelby any more thought, at least not till over a month later, when she wakes up suddenly in the night and knows there’s someone else in the house who shouldn’t be.

“Jack,” she says, and reaches into the dark, only to feel him already sitting bolt upright in the bed, tense under her hand. 

“Downstairs?” is all he says.

“Parlour, I think,” says Phryne, and rolls out of bed, reaching for her peignoir. Her pistol she removes from a vanity drawer. Jack has taken the poker from the fireplace - how she regrets leaving most of her good firearms in Melbourne - and now he follows her silently as she creeps down the stairs and swings into the parlour.

Tommy looks calmly down the barrel of her gun, takes a drag on his cigarette and says: “I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in.”

*

There are many things Jack hates about England. The weather, for one. The food. The fact that Phryne’s parade of “old friends” includes the gangster king of Birmingham, who is not above hiring a woman to do his dirty work. Has he mentioned the weather?

“He’s a copper,” snarls Thomas Shelby. “I’m not telling my business to a copper.”

“Then you can take your business elsewhere,” Phryne snaps, eyes blazing, a hellion in damask. She has placed herself between Shelby and Jack, a protective instinct which Jack would appreciate more if he were not so low on sleep. “Jack is my partner. If you’re to trust me, you’ll trust him too.”

Shelby glares at him from the fireplace. Jack toasts him wearily with the cup of coffee that a horrified housemaid rustled up before she had to abandon her libertine mistress to the company of not one, but two, gentlemen of dubious quality.

“Anyway,” continues Phryne blithely, “he’s continents out of his jurisdiction, he couldn’t arrest you if he wanted to.”

Jack looks at the ceiling for forbearance. When it is not forthcoming, he asks it of the mantelpiece clock, which proclaims the time to be a quarter to six and is of little help otherwise. 

Shelby exhales a cloud of smoke in his direction. He’s dressed dapper for a criminal, though not ostentatiously so; still, Jack feels wrong-footed wearing naught but a dressing gown in his presence. He’d go change, but he’ll be damned if he leaves Phryne alone with this man. 

“Inspector,” says Shelby, as if trying out the shape of the word in his mouth. He’s devastatingly handsome, at least; there’s no accounting for Phryne’s tastes sometimes. There is a nasty cut above his brow, still healing. “You were in France, eh?”

“I was at Pozieres,” says Jack. “Yourself?”

“The Somme and the Bulge.” Shelby looks him up and down and appears to come to some sort of conclusion. “There’s a man dead in the Ritz Hotel. An American, name of Clive Macmillan. I want his murder solved.”

“What’s it got to do with you?” Phryne demands.

Shelby turns his ice-blue gaze from her, into the dead fireplace. “His wife - his widow - is an old employee of mine. I’d like to see her taken care of.” He looks up. “Discreetly.”

“Miss Fisher,” says Jack. “A word.”

In the hallway, he says: “He’s lying.”

“He’s not telling us everything,” Phryne corrects him. “That can be made to change.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like him.” Phryne adjusts the collar of her peignoir absently; he can see her skin pebbling from the chill of a London morning. “You never like any of my lovers from the war.”

“I never like any of your lovers,” clarifies Jack, “but this one is in criminally poor taste, even for you.”

Phryne makes a moue at him. “You know I’m terribly susceptible to good bone structure.”

Jack does not wish to compare bone structure with Thomas Shelby. He’s sensible of his own qualities and thinks Shelby might win this one. “What makes you think he didn’t murder the American himself?”

“He wouldn’t come to me if he did,” says Phryne simply. “And if the Peaky Blinders can’t sort this out on their own, then it’s serious. A murder, Jack! You can’t say you’re not intrigued.”

“I’m on leave,” says Jack fatalistically, though she’s got him and she knows it. He doesn’t know London, has felt perilously out of his depth since he got here - doesn’t understand the accents, doesn’t fit in with the society swells that her family rubs shoulders with. But murder he knows. Solving murders with Phryne Fisher would make sense to him in any land and any language. 

“As you’ve so charmingly pointed out to your client,” he says, “I am out of my jurisdiction. I couldn’t support you in the way you’re accustomed to.”

“Why, Inspector,” says Phryne, lifting a knuckle to brush against his cheek, “I am a woman of means. I don’t need the full weight of the Victorian constabulary behind me - just you.”

One day she will tire of him and she will leave him. She will spin again out of his orbit and he will spend the rest of his days grounded by the gravity of her loss, his face turned to the sky. Jack has made his peace with this; he is nothing if not organised. Once he thought in terms of forevers, of _death do us part_ , and look where that got him. Now, while the brilliance of her attention is fixed on him, he takes every second as it comes.

“I won’t have you obstructing police business,” he says, affecting a sternness he knows she will disregard. 

“I would never obstruct police business,” says Phryne sunnily. “But if it would like to have its way with me, who am I to say no?”

*

It’s just gone seven when they sail up the steps of the Ritz, Phryne resplendent in a white frock and stole in defiance of London’s grime. Doors open, bellhops leap to drag baggage out of their way. Elan gets them as far as the second floor, where Phryne raps imperiously on the door of 222 before the constable stationed outside 223 can stop them. “Ma’am, this is a crime scene - "

Phryne ignores him. “Grace, darling!” she cries. “Are you there?”

The door is opened by a man Jack knows instinctively to be of his own tribe: a Detective Inspector. “Mrs Macmillan is not available,” he begins.

Phryne peers over his shoulder at the young woman who has risen from the settee. She is coiffed and lovely, though there is a hard edge to her beauty. She is a little too pale for the rose gown she is wearing, and her eyes are red-rimmed. 

“Oh, we’re so terribly sorry,” flutes Phryne, “we came as soon as we heard. This is my fiancé, Mr Robinson,” she pats Jack’s arm, “if you recall, you were introduced at Lady Sarah of Connemara’s ball?” 

Something shifts in Grace Macmillan’s expression on hearing the false name Shelby told them to say, like the tumblers of a lock falling into place. “Of course,” she says, “thank you for coming,” and then she keels over in a dead faint.

Phryne ducks under the inspector’s arm and rustles over to her. “Oh, my dear!” she cries. “Quickly, Jack, we’ve got to get her to bed.” Jack obligingly enters to scoop up a limp Grace in his arms. Her golden head lolls against his lapel as he moves to deposit her on the bed. Phryne turns on the inspector. “If you’re quite done terrorising this poor woman?”

The inspector stands his ground, which in the face of the whirlwind that is Miss Fisher is no mean feat. Jack silently salutes him. “And you are?”

Phryne flicks a card out of her purse and hands it to him loftily. “The Honourable Phryne Fisher. Mrs Macmillan is a very dear friend. Who are _you?_ ”

“Inspector Spade of Scotland Yard. And can you confirm her whereabouts last night?”

Phryne gasps theatrically. “You don’t mean to say she is a suspect?”

“I’m afraid we can’t rule it out.”

“How perfectly dreadful. Well, as you can see, she is indisposed now; you might wait for her to recover before you harangue her further.”

It takes more fluttering and a frankly unnecessary amount of heaving on the part of Phryne’s bosom, but eventually the police officers decide their time would be best used elsewhere and they are left alone with an unconscious Grace.

“Actually unconscious, too,” says Phryne, checking her pulse, “and here I was commending her knack for improvisation. Hand me the smelling salts in my purse, will you?”

“I’m a little horrified at how easily you bend policemen to your will the world over.”

“Come now, Jack - you took a bit more work than that, give yourself credit.” Phryne holds the salts under Grace’s nose; she awakes with a start. 

“Tommy sent you,” she says thickly.

“Yes, he’s engaged my services,” says Phryne briskly. “Phryne Fisher, private detective. This is Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, but don’t mind him, he’s on vacation.”

Grace sits up, wincing. “Did he kill him? Tommy?”

Phryne and Jack exchange looks. Jack’s look, he hopes, conveys _I told you so._ Phryne rolls her eyes. “Why would you think that, Grace?”

“No,” decides Grace. Jack had assumed she would be American, but she speaks with a lilting Irish brogue. “He wouldn’t have left him for me to find. Why are you here, Miss Fisher?”

“To solve your husband’s murder. Drink?” Phryne reaches for the snifter of brandy on the sideboard.

“No,” says Grace, blanching. “No, thank you.”

“You found the body?” Jack puts in. 

Grace nods. She does not flinch at the mention of it, Jack notes; this woman is not prone to the vapours. Yet the fainting fit she had earlier seemed real enough. “I came back at about three - ”

“In the morning?” says Jack. His hand itches for his notebook. “Where were you at three in the morning, Mrs Macmillan?”

Grace studies the coverlet. “Walking. It clears the head.”

“For a woman to walk alone in London at three in the morning seems unsafe.”

“I take precautions,” says Grace. “As I was saying, I came back at three or so, and I saw the light was still on in his room - ” she nods towards the adjoining door, which is now shut “ - and I went in and saw him lying there with his brains all over the pillow.”

“Are the rooms the same?” asks Phryne. When Grace nods, she says: “Jack, could you?” Jack sighs and lies down on the bed as if in repose. “Where would you say the bullet entered?” 

Grace gets up unsteadily and walks over to the left side of the bed. She touches Jack lightly above his temple. 

Phryne makes an imaginary gun with her fingers and points it at him. She crouches, frowning, and tries again. “This is a very odd angle at which to shoot somebody in the head,” she says.

“Indeed,” says Jack. “It would be easier to shoot him straight in the face. Sorry,” he adds to Grace. 

“That’s all right.” Grace hugs her elbows. “I - excuse me.” She stumbles into the lavatory. The sound of retching comes through the door.

Phryne, unperturbed, tries the connecting door to Room 223, which is locked. “You might want to cover your eyes at this part, Jack,” she says, pulling her lock picks out of her purse.

Jack stares balefully at the ceiling. “It’s kind of you to think of my sensibilities, Miss Fisher.”

There are, thankfully, no police officers at the crime scene. The body has been removed but the bed is still dark with blood. Grace was right about the angle of the shot, observes Jack, mapping the pattern of spatter on the floor. 

“Jack, look.” Phryne is peering at an ashtray. There are at least three cigarette stubs in it, fresh from the looks of them. “Did your husband smoke?” she asks Grace, who seems to have recovered and is now leaning in the doorway. 

“No,” says Grace. “He couldn’t abide the smell.”

Jack examines the stubs. “Sweet Aftons. Isn’t that what Mr Shelby smokes?”

“As, I am sure, do many in London,” says Phryne. She sniffs the air. “Smell that?”

Jack tries it. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Precisely,” says Phryne. "They weren't smoked here." She is now sifting through the papers on the desk, which seem to be medical reports. “Oh, you’re seeing Dr Fentiman in Harley Street. Cousin Guy and Isabella were consulting with him, though Aunt P says they haven’t had much success yet…” She trails off and stares hard at Grace, who holds her gaze evenly. “But that hasn’t been the case for you, has it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Grace.

Jack glances between the two of them. He’s missed something, but hopefully Phryne will explain it later without being too smug about it.

The door bangs open and they turn to look at the startled chambermaid who has just bustled in. 

“Sorry,” she gasps, “I’m just here to - the sheets - ”

Inspector Spade looks in over her shoulder and seems to grow apoplectic at the sight of them standing around the crime scene. “What are you doing in here?”

“Getting Mrs Macmillan’s things,” says Phryne. “Surely you can’t expect her to stay a second more in the next room from where her husband was shot. Should you need to interview her again, you may do so at my address.” She makes to shuffle the papers from Harley Street together.

“Put those down, Miss Fisher!” barks the inspector. Jack feels a great pang of sympathy for him. Phryne drops the papers as if in shock; they scatter all around. Jack bends down to collect them, noticing as he does the maid’s shoes. They are unusually pristine, except for the speck of dried blood on the instep of her right Mary Jane.

“Do you do this room every day?” he asks.

“Sir?” The maid stares at him. “I...I do the whole floor, sir.”

“What time do you do it?”

“Miss Fisher,” says the inspector, “get your fiancé off the floor and yourselves out of this hotel, before I’m compelled to continue this conversation down at the station.”

“Certainly,” says Phryne briskly. “Come along, Jack.” She takes Grace firmly by the arm and walks her back into her room. 

It’s only when they’ve bundled Grace and her worldly possessions into a cab and are trundling off through Piccadilly that Grace says: “She’s the night maid. She comes in at eight, while we’re at dinner. It’s another girl who does the rooms in the morning.”

“Did she do the room last evening?”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Grace. “I was out by then. If you’re planning to keep up the fiancé act, you should look into getting a ring.”

  
  


*

“Hello?” It’s the voice of a young woman; she sounds tired and irritable, and there’s a baby crying in the background. 

“Miss Fisher calling for Mr Shelby,” says Phryne.

The young woman sighs noisily. “Oi! Tommy! Get over here, you daft beggar, there’s some fancy miss on the line for you.”

Tommy comes on the line. “Thomas Shelby speaking.”

“Your secretary’s got a mouth on her,” remarks Phryne.

“That’s my sister Ada,” says Tommy, “and I’ve long given up trying to govern what she does with that mouth. Where are you on Macmillan’s murder?”

“Grace is sleeping upstairs.” Phryne glances down the hallway to check for eavesdroppers, then adds: “Speaking of which - the baby is yours, isn’t it?”

Tommy is silent. Then: “She told you, eh?”

“Lucky guess,” says Phryne. “I saw the reports from their Harley Street fertility doctor, but it seems the fault lay with Mr Macmillan after all.”

“I hired you to find out things I don’t know, not tell me what I already do,” says Tommy curtly.

“You’re going to need to tell us what you do know, then,” Phryne shoots back. “I don’t see why I should work in the dark if there’s a box of matches at hand. Do you know that almost the first thing Grace asked me was if you’d killed her husband?”

Another pause. Tommy is probably drawing on his cigarette. “Fair enough,” he says eventually.

“I can’t believe I have to ask this, but did you kill the person whose murder you hired me to solve?”

“I’ve never even met the man.”

“Well, have you got an alibi for last night? I’ve a feeling you’ll need it.”

“I do. Unfortunately it will not hold up in court.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because that person would never testify on my behalf.” Tommy considers. “Well, he might. But it would cost me.”

“May I speak to him?”

“No,” says Tommy harshly. “It’s a waste of time, and too dangerous besides.”

“I insist on speaking to him,” repeats Phryne. “I must cover all the angles, Tommy.”

Tommy swears quietly, then rattles off an address in Camden. “Half past one. Don’t bring your inspector.” Phryne opens her mouth to protest, but he cuts her off. “I mean it, Phryne. If Robinson walks in there, none of us walks out.”

Phryne hangs up to see her mother regarding her critically in the hallway. “Phryne dear, I hear all sorts of people are traipsing through this house at all hours. Must you, really?”

“Mrs Macmillan is a poor grieving widow - do exercise some charity, Mother.” Phryne does not want to think upon what her mother has been told about Tommy; she can only hope the early hour excised most of the details. “She’ll be staying with us until I solve her husband’s murder.”

“Oh, not this murder lark again! I’ve said time and again, it’s all very well what you do off in the colonies, but this is _London_. It’s bad enough you carrying on under our roof with a policeman, and a divorced one at that. No offence, Inspector,” she adds to Jack, who is coming down the stairs.

“None taken,” says Jack calmly.

“Only people do talk.”

“I refuse to believe London society has got so stale in my absence that they would descend to such a fascination,” says Phryne. “With Jack, of all people.”

“Indeed,” says Jack. “As conversation topics go, Lady Richmond, I am very much on the duller end of the spectrum.”

“But perhaps you and Father should spend a few days in the country, to spare your nerves,” adds Phryne caustically. “I can’t promise we won’t have more unexpected visitors darkening our door.”

“Really, Phryne,” huffs her mother. “We had hoped you would settle down in the Antipodes, but it has not improved your temperament one bit.” She ascends the stairs, patting Jack absently on the hand as she passes him. “Do try to be more of a steadying influence, Inspector.”

“I assure you,” Jack calls after her, “that the days of your daughter not listening to me have come to a happy middle.”

Phryne sits down on the stairs, stewing. “She’s like a firework, really. Lovely from a distance, but you don’t want one going off in your face.”

Jack comes to sit next to her. “I still don’t know if she likes me or not.”

“Mixed emotions,” says Phryne. “You produce that effect on all the Fisher women.”

“Hm,” is all Jack says. Phryne tips her head onto his shoulder, and they sit on the stairs in silence, listening to the sounds of the street outside the front door. 

“I have to go somewhere with Tommy this afternoon,” she says after a while. “You can’t come.”

“Can’t I now?”

“No, he was very firm.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Most likely.”

Jack considers this. From the way his jaw is working, Phryne can tell he is rehearsing a vivid argument in his head. She lets him thrash it out.

“Bring your gun,” he says finally.

“Of course,” says Phryne. “What will you do?”

“The maid with blood on her shoe,” says Jack. “That needs to be followed up on. Though I’m more likely to get lost in London than follow anyone successfully.”

“We can send out for help. Come on.” Phryne hops to her feet, reaching down for him. “Let’s see if our widow’s ready to talk.”

*

“I told Clive last night about the baby,” says Grace without prevarication. 

Phryne tops up her teacup. “How did he take it?”

“How do you think? It broke him.” Grace swirls the tea in the cup as if it were whisky in a glass. “I said he could have a divorce if he liked, and he said he wouldn’t even countenance it. He tried to say cruel things to me, to hurt me in turn, but it takes a lot to hurt me, and he’d had no practice.” 

She takes a sip of tea. “I left then. Went for a walk, found some dinner, went to one of those jazz clubs in Leicester Square where you can sit all night for ten shillings. Walked along the river. Then I came back and found him.”

Jack misses his notebook. Phryne never takes notes; either she has a memory like a vise or she has actually been relying on his notes the whole time, in which case this is something of a bust. For lack of something to do with his fingers, he fiddles with the teaspoon.

“Do you know anyone who might have wanted to harm your husband?” he asks.

“Besides Tommy?” says Grace. She says it with an unsettlingly straight face. “Not that I can think of. He knew hardly anyone in London.”

“If I were the lead inspector on this case,” says Jack, “which owing to time and geography I am not, the two of you would be my main suspects.”

“I can see that,” says Grace with some foreboding.

“So perhaps then we ought to think of who might want to harm _you_ ,” puts in Phryne.

Grace gives a dry chuckle. “I wouldn’t know where to begin with who might want to harm Tommy. I’m sure if you went all the way to Timbuktu, you’d find somebody he’d done wrong. For myself I can think of no one.” She pauses. “There was one man, but you needn’t worry about him.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s dead,” says Grace matter-of-factly. “I’m told he was shot recently.”

“Not by you?” Jack feels like he has to ask.

“Not by me.” Grace considers this, then adds a caveat: “At least, not recently.”

“Just for the record,” says Jack, although there is of course no record, “ _why_ did this man wish you harm?”

“He asked me to marry him. I declined. He took it as a slight.”

Jack wonders if everyone who proposes marriage to this woman winds up dead. He keeps this thought to himself.

“Did you love your husband?” Phryne inquires. She does not sound accusatory, rather genuinely curious as to why a woman might put herself to so much trouble.

“No,” says Grace. “And I’ll surely be judged for it, but the fact is when you’re a woman without means in desperate times, love does not enter into it. He was kind to me and I thought I could have a decent life with him.”

There is a defensive prickle creeping into her tone. Jack wants to say that he does in fact understand, that he once came very close to marrying somebody for kindness when he did not trust that the person he loved would love him back in a way less than unbearable, and that thankfully for them both, Concetta did what Grace did not. It would probably not have ended in murder, but more likely than not it would have ended in tears. He makes himself put the teaspoon down.

“Not that this has any bearing on the investigation,” says Phryne, more gently than is her wont, “but have you thought about what you will do with the baby?”

“I don’t know,” says Grace. It is the first time they’ve heard her voice waver. “Can you solve that mystery too?”

*

“A bakery,” says Phryne. “Really.”

Tommy glances up at the sign for the Aerated Bread Company. “Don’t mention the bread. But if you are offered any, take the white.”

“Why?”

“Because the brown’s horrible. Come on.” Tommy knocks on the door, which is opened by a thin man in an apron and yarmulke. “Hello, Ollie.”

“You didn’t say it’d be a woman.” Ollie looks her up and down; Phryne gazes back at him coolly. “Gentile, too.”

“Does it matter?” says Tommy.

“Wait here,” says Ollie, and shuts the door in their faces.

Tommy lights another cigarette. “So,” he says. “Robinson. Not your usual, eh?”

Phryne does not roll her eyes, but it’s a near thing. “People have all sorts of ideas about what my usual is. I find they tend to mean ‘not like them’.”

“He’s an honest policeman. The most dangerous sort. You never know what they’ll do.”

“The right thing.”

“Precisely,” says Tommy balefully. “Whatever that is.”

“What about Grace?” Phryne shoots back at him. “I find it hard to believe she was in your employ.”

“She was,” says Tommy. “She was a barmaid at one of my pubs that I hired to do the books. She was also a spy the Crown sent to infiltrate my operation, which she did with a fair amount of success.”

“Hang on,” says Phryne. “She betrayed you? And you’re still sleeping with her?”

“You sound like my Aunt Polly. She never liked Grace.”

“You’re not a forgiving man," Phryne informs him. "So this is very much not your usual.”

“She made things quiet.” Tommy tilts his head up and lets smoke stream into the gruel-coloured sky. “When I was with her. I no longer heard them coming through the wall.”

Phryne remembers the line of his back in the moonlight, his face turned towards the sound of digging she could not hear. This is no small admission to be making in the alley outside a Camden crime den.

“That is something,” she says eventually.

“It is.”

The door opens again. Ollie beckons them in with a jerk of the head. “Search them both.”

Phryne submits to a rigorous if clinical patdown and hands over her pistol ruefully to one of the stone-faced men at the door. Then they follow Ollie through dim, smoky chambers full of barrels with conspicuously no bread in sight. 

In the office at the end of it is a broad, powerfully-built man with a bushel of a beard. He looks benign enough behind the desk, but Phryne is reminded of a bear - lumbering at a distance, then suddenly close enough to rip your head off.

“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,” he says as they enter, “what have you gone and fucking done?”

“I don’t know, Alfie,” says Tommy, dragging out a chair for Phryne and taking one himself. “What have I done?”

“Waltzing in here with this shiksa.” The man squints at her through his half-moon glasses. “A woman like this will throw my men off their game for weeks. Mucks with the flavour of the bread, I can tell you. It’s a wonder nothing has combusted since she walked in.”

“Sounds like a problem with your men,” says Tommy. “Phryne, this is Alfie Solomons of Camden. Alfie, this is the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher.”

“Another of your posh birds. I swear you’re collecting them like they’re going extinct.” Alfie kicks his shoes up on his desk. “It’s a dreadful habit, mate, you have got to stop.”

“I am a private detective, Mr Solomons,” says Phryne, “and Mr Shelby has contracted me to solve a case.”

“To wit,” says Alfie, “the problem caused him by another posh bird, and he thinks that if he throws more of them at the matter it will solve itself.”

“Mr Solomons, was Mr Shelby with you last evening?”

“Could be that he was.” Alfie polishes his spectacles on his sleeve. “Could be that he wasn’t. If I were him, I would be feeling pretty fucking existential right about now.”

“Right, Alfie,” says Tommy wearily, “what do you want?”

“To sharpen my memory, which has grown shockingly elastic in my dotage, and account unto the servants of the law that Thomas Shelby broke bread with me last night and was not otherwise at the Ritz shooting Americans in the head?” Alfie spreads his hands. “I would accept forty per cent of the export business.”

“Oh fuck off, Alfie.” 

“You know I don’t like policemen, Tommy,” says Alfie. “And I don’t even like you very much half the time, so it don’t make sense for me to go talking to policemen on your behalf, do it?”

Tommy lights a cigarette in a show of exasperation. “Well, cheerio.” To Phryne, “I hope you got what you came for.”

“Hang on,” says Phryne. “Mr Solomons, how do you know about what happened in the Ritz?”

“Because I have a lad serving tables in Palm Court who keeps an eye on the toffs there,” says Alfie. “Among them Thomas Shelby’s mistress on the second floor.”

“You had someone watching Grace,” says Tommy flatly.

“Yeah, of course I did. Not the only one doing that, neither. Which reminds me.” Alfie beckons Ollie over. “Get Ezra out of the Ritz and have him reposted to...where is it you live again, Miss Fisher?”

“I’m not telling you,” snaps Phryne.

“Ezra’ll work it out, he’s a smart lad,” says Alfie to Ollie. “Don’t look so gloomy, Tom, mate. If you don’t want people following your women you shouldn’t keep any.”

“Who else?” presses Phryne. “Who else had someone in the Ritz?”

Alfie spreads his hands to gesture at their surroundings. “What does this look like, Miss Fisher?”

Phryne says, with as straight a face as she can manage: “A bakery?”

“It looks like a fucking rum distillery, is what it looks like,” says Alfie, “but what it does not look like is a charity shop. No more questions. Though I will give you a bit of advice, Miss Fisher.”

“Yes?” says Phryne warily.

“I’d keep any inspectors I have away from that woman, Grace,” says Alfie. “Know what she did to the last one? Shot him.”

“All right,” says Tommy, rising. “Thanks for nothing, Alfie. Same time next quarter?”

“Yeah,” says Alfie. “Now fuck off.”

“I think he likes you,” says Tommy later, as they retrieve their guns.

Phryne scoffs. “I’ve never seen anyone more immune to my charms.”

“No, I’m serious.” Tommy inspects the cylinder of his Webley, then slots it back into place. “He didn’t try to shoot you in the face even once.”

*

“So,” says Arthur Shelby, “what’s Australia like? Full of sheep, eh?”

Earlier today, Jack would have said that he could not think of a worse way to spend his afternoon than sitting in a car making small talk with Thomas Shelby. He has realised since that there are direr alternatives, namely sitting in a car making small talk with Thomas Shelby’s brother. Unfortunately Jack does not yet know London well enough to get around it alone, nor can he simply snap his fingers and have Collins bring the car round. Furthermore it is raining, in the half-hearted but bloody-minded way peculiar to London weather. He supposes he is at least glad of the Shelbys’ Bugatti.

“The number of sheep is considerable,” he says, to sate Arthur’s curiosity.

“Linda talks sometimes about moving to Australia,” says Arthur. “That’s the girl I’m seeing now. Proper God-fearing woman she is. She wants us to move after we’re married, to Australia or America or somewhere like that. Says I should leave behind my life of crime and start afresh.”

“Good idea,” says Jack. 

“Not got a lot of crime in Australia, do you?”

“There is actually a surprising amount of crime in Australia,” says Jack. “All things considered.”

“Yeah? Maybe we’d be better off in California.” 

Jack reckons California would be better off without any Shelbys in it, but keeps these thoughts to himself.

“This bloody weather,” says Arthur. He squints at the service entrance of the Ritz. “Who’re we waiting for again?”

“The maid who did the Macmillans’ room last night,” says Jack patiently. “We think she may be a witness.”

“Then we grab her?”

“No,” says Jack through gritted teeth. “We’re going to follow her, and then I’m going to talk to her in a perfectly civil fashion.”

“That’s how you do things in Australia, eh?”

“That’s how we do things in the police.”

“Doesn’t seem very effective to me,” concludes Arthur.

Jack briefly considers driving them into the back wall of the Ritz.

Arthur has taken something out of his pocket. Jack glances over and observes to his alarm that it is a packet of cocaine, in broad daylight. His brain seizes up at the sight.

“Want some?” offers Arthur.

“No,” says Jack, horrified. “No, I do not want any cocaine.”

“Oh, right,” says Arthur, “on account of you being a policeman and all. But you can’t arrest me, can you?” He pauses to give this some genuine consideration. “Can you?”

“Dear God,” says Jack to the dashboard.

Fortunately this is the point when a bevy of women stream out of the service entrance chattering, their target among them. She looks ill at ease and is clutching her handbag to her with both arms. She brushes off attempts by the others at conversation and is soon walking off down the street alone.

“Follow her,” Jack tells Arthur, which is how he ends up being driven through Piccadilly in fits and starts by a coke-addled gangster. Somehow or other, they make it to Seven Dials in one piece without having been made by their target, who is moving up the street when the door of one of the houses bangs open and a dark-haired man rushes out. “Louisa!” he calls.

“That’s Enzo Ricci,” growls Arthur, as the pair meet on the steps. “He runs with Sabini’s boys.” Enzo and Louisa are having a heated argument. Louisa pulls something wrapped in a towel out of her handbag. Enzo grabs it from her and starts off down the street. Louisa watches him go, biting her lip. Then she turns and clatters up the steps into the boardinghouse.

Jack leaps out of the car into the slanting rain. “You follow him,” he tells Arthur. “I’ll stay with her.”

He ducks into the flimsy shade of a newsstand and watches as Louisa appears briefly in a second-floor window to pull it shut against the rain.

Jack buys a newspaper for appearances and waits. It doesn’t take long; a matron and her four young charges come bustling out of the front door, and it’s a matter of sprinting across the pavement to hold the door for them politely, and then letting himself in after.

He works his way up the narrow, greasy stairs and locates the flat he thinks he saw Louisa in. She opens it on the third knock and stares uncomprehending up at him for a handful of seconds, before recognition flares in her eyes and she tries to slam the door shut.

Jack gets his foot in the door, wincing. “I just want to talk, Louisa.”

“Go away!” cries Louisa, clinging to the door. Behind her he can see the shambles of a domicile: an unmade bed, unwashed bottles in the sink, an empty crib. 

“You saw the body, didn’t you?” he says urgently. “There was blood on your shoe - you stepped in it when it was still wet last night. What did you see?”

“I didn’t kill him,” says Louisa. She has begun to weep. “Leave me be.”

“They’re likely to pin it on Mrs Macmillan,” he persists. “You know she’s innocent; she could hang for it.”

Louisa’s face hardens. She shoves him out of the doorway. “Better her than me,” she says, and shuts the door in his face.

Jack gathers himself. More knocking gets him nowhere, nor is he the sort of man who will break down a woman’s door, not even for the truth. Eventually he decides to make a note of the address - perhaps Phryne will have better luck - and limps, toes bruised, back down to the street, where he hails a cab for the Fisher residence.

He is alighting when the Fishers’ housemaid Ellen darts desperately into the street, spots him and runs up to him in a panic. “Sir, you’ve got to come quickly! Miss Fisher’s not back yet, and the police are here!”

Inside, a constable is marching Grace down the stairs, her hands cuffed behind her, Spade leading the way. Jack skids into the front hall. “What’s this, Inspector?”

“Mrs Macmillan is under arrest for her husband’s murder,” says Spade. “Out of the way, sir.”

“On what grounds?”

“Turns out she’s the sole beneficiary of his will,” says Spade. “It’s as good a motive as I’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t want it!” cries Grace. “I never wanted any of his damn money!” 

The door bangs open behind Jack, and then it turns out that all they needed for everything to become clear was to put Thomas Shelby and Grace Macmillan in a room together. 

The look on Tommy’s face is one Jack recognises, because once he was in Phryne’s hallway, trying to take his leave of her in a way that didn’t feel like he was like he was abandoning a vital organ, and he caught his own eye in the looking-glass behind her. It was not a good look. He shudders to think upon it even now. He has a fraction of a second to digest all this before Tommy strides past him and says calmly: “I did it. Let her go.”

“Tommy,” says Phryne, ducking through the door after him, “that is precisely what we agreed you should _not_ do.”

“I don’t care,” says Tommy. He extends his wrists. “What are you waiting for, gentlemen, a gilt invitation?”

“Tommy,” breathes Grace, “what are you doing?”

“Mr Shelby,” says Spade, “am I to understand you are confessing to the murder of Clive Macmillan?”

“If you like,” says Tommy. “Come on, I don’t have all day.”

Spade sighs. “If you killed Mr Macmillan, then where is the murder weapon?”

“Fucked if I know,” says Tommy. “Must have tossed it in the river.”

“ _What,”_ says Spade, “is the murder weapon?”

Tommy shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“Mr Macmillan was shot by a Colt M1917, which he himself carried in his luggage,” says Spade. 

Tommy smacks his forehead. “Of course. I recall now. It was right there. Very handy.”

Phryne’s mother comes out of the drawing room, takes in the tableau in the front hall, emits a shriek of “ _Phryne!_ ” and collapses in a dead faint. 

Phryne throws her hands up in despair. “Really, Mother? Really?”

Jack has to go transport the Baroness of Richmond to the nearest couch. He returns just in time to see Tommy storm across the hall and take Grace by her cuffed hands. The constable attempts to stop him, but Tommy does not even seem to register his existence.

“You’re mad,” says Grace in wonder.

“I’ve made nothing but mad choices since I let you sing in my pub,” says Tommy, “and I don’t see why I should stop now. I need you safe, Grace. You and the baby.”

“The what?” says Inspector Spade.

“Inspector,” says Tommy, “this woman is the love of my life and the mother of my child, and if you don’t take these cuffs off her and put them on me this second, I will shoot you in the face.”

Phryne crosses her arms. “Now that is a romantic overture.”

“Indeed,” says Jack dryly. “I’m taking notes.”

*

The phone in the hall rings. Phryne answers it. 

“Tell me,” says a woman’s voice conversationally, “does every male of the Shelby name piss his brains out through his cock before he’s thirty, or is this just a bad batch?”

“You tell me,” says Phryne. “Who’s this?”

“This is Polly Gray. Where’s Tommy?”

The infamous Aunt Polly. “I’m afraid he’s been arrested.”

“Arrested,” repeats Polly. “Over that fucking barmaid. And here’s me left holding Small Heath down all by myself. If they don’t hang him for it, I’ll get my own rope. You must be Miss Fisher.”

“I am she,” says Phryne. “We’re trying to get your nephew absolved, though that’s been rather tricky since he confessed quite blithely to the crime.”

“At least he hired a woman for the job,” says Polly. “Only sensible thing he’s done all year. Get it sorted, will you? This company will be the death of me.” She hangs up.

“Did you know that Tommy has an Aunt P too?” Phryne tells Jack, who is leaning against the balustrade quizzically. “Why are Aunt Ps always such forces of nature? Heaven knows.”

Jack opens his mouth to respond, but they are both distracted by the sight of Grace descending the stairs with a determined set to her mouth. She has swapped the delicate rose garment of this morning for a cream blouse and sensible wool skirt, over which she has slung a worn-looking coat of forest green. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” says Jack.

Grace adjusts her hat, a broad-brimmed affair. “To the station, to see about Tommy.”

“But what good will that do?” asks Phryne.

“Well, I can’t bloody sit here and twiddle my thumbs, can I?” Grace takes a deep breath and musters herself. “I am sorry. But I could never stand to be idle.”

Phryne looks inquiringly at Jack, who sighs. “By all means, let’s go harangue the police. I suppose I ought to see how the other half lives for a change.”

*

Haranguing the police is not half as fun as Miss Fisher makes it look. They are summarily ignored for a good half-hour. Grace is up at the counter trying in vain to request to see Tommy, or failing that Inspector Spade. Phryne is openly ogling the bulletin boards and criminal sketches. “I hope this leaves you with a better appreciation of City South,” says Jack. 

“Oh, City South has excellent service,” says Phryne. “I’m always very promptly seen to.” She starts browsing the contents of an unattended mail trolley. Jack removes a parcel from her hands and replaces it reprovingly. Phryne pouts at him and starts peering down the corridors, presumably for some offices she can invade. 

Before Jack can head her off, there is a commotion at the station entrance, where a young woman has burst in yelling. “Oi! I’d like to report a break-in!”

This causes a ripple of alarm among the policemen. Clearly she is not unfamiliar to them. “Look, Miss Shelby,” says one, “you can’t just come in here - ”

“How many times have I bloody told you? That’s _Mrs Thorne_ to you, sergeant,” says the woman, who can’t be older than Dot. “Now I think your governor would like to see this one - ” and here she reaches into her handbag with a gloved hand and pulls out a gun. 

Everyone in the precinct springs for their own firearm. Unperturbed, Mrs Thorne marches up to the front desk and slams the gun down in front of the sergeant on duty. 

“What’s this,” says the man, nonplussed.

“It’s a Colt M1917. Reckon it’s that murder weapon you’re looking for. Some bastard broke into my house to try and plant it. My brother will be along with him - he’s just finding a spot for the car now, the parking on this street’s awful. Hello, Grace.”

“Ada,” says Grace equably.

“Heard you’re up the duff,” says Ada, as if remarking on the weather. “Guess you won the Shelby raffle.”

“Lucky me,” says Grace darkly. “Ah, there’s Arthur.”

Arthur is dragging a rather battered Enzo, whom he all but dumps on the counter before the consternated policemen.

“There,” he growls. “Done all your fucking work for you. Now where’s our brother, eh?”

“But this doesn’t mean anything,” says Spade, who has finally made an appearance. “Who is this man? Did you just haul him off the street?”

“He’s the one what killed her husband.” Arthur stabs a finger in Grace’s direction.

“And all we’ve got to go on is the word of a thug and a red-ragger,” says Spade dismissively. “Don’t waste my time.”

“I didn’t.”

This comes from Enzo - thickly, on account of his nose having made acquaintance with Arthur’s fist sometime in the past hour. “You don’t understand,” he wheezes. “They have - they have - ” He bites off his sentence, eyes darting around frantically.

And Jack suddenly remembers. The empty crib, the terror in Louisa’s eyes. 

He crosses to where Arthur has Enzo pinned down. “They have your baby, don’t they?” he says quietly in Enzo’s ear. “Yours and Louisa’s. Don’t say it, just blink.”

Enzo stares desperately at him. Then, slowly, deliberately, he blinks.

“Who? Sabini?”

Another blink.

“We’ll get the child back,” says Jack. “But you and Louisa, you’ll have to come clean about what happened in the Ritz.”

Enzo squeezes his eyes shut. Tears leak out of their corners. Then, under his breath, he gives an address in Clerkenwell.

“Come on,” says Jack to Arthur, who releases Enzo with a grunt and jerks a thumb at him. “What about him?”

“I’ll watch him,” calls Ada. “You boys go ahead.”

Spade eyes them warily. “Where are you off to now?”

“You’re welcome to come along,” says Jack. 

Spade narrows his eyes suspiciously at him.

“Never mind,” says Jack. “We’ll catch you up later.”

It is only when they are all packed into the car that Jack realises he is quite probably the sole person present who makes any sort of plan before charging into a perilous situation, and that right now he has none anyway.

“What are you doing?” he says in despair to Grace, who has climbed in with them.

“I’m coming with you,” Grace says matter-of-factly. She pulls a revolver out of her purse and begins checking it methodically.

“Is that a Harrington & Richardson?” Phryne is thrilled. “What a sensible choice. How does it handle?”

Jack realises awkwardly that he is now also the only member of the party who is unarmed.

Arthur reaches under the seat and pulls out a box, which he offers to Jack. It is, of course, full of guns. “Here,” he says kindly. “Help yourself.”

*

The Clerkenwell address is a small, slightly rundown house in Saffron Hill. Arthur drops them round the corner. “Give us five minutes,” says Jack - he is using his police operation voice, which always thrills Phryne more than she will ever let on and which he probably knows about anyway. “Right,” growls Arthur, and the car peels away.

They sneak down an alley to the house’s back entrance, Jack in the vanguard, Grace bringing up the rear. Jack glances through the kitchen window, then says, “Quickly, Miss Fisher,” and she drops down beside the door, lock picks already in hand. 

The door’s hinges are thankfully oiled. The kitchen is empty, well-kept and, from the profusion of tomatoes, an Italian one. There are raised voices coming from what looks to be the sitting room down the hall. They all still when they hear the sound of a baby crying.

“Please.” It’s Louisa; Phryne recognises her voice from the hotel. “Please, we did like you asked, please let me have him.”

“Yeah, but your Enzo’s gone and got himself pinched, hasn’t he? And not even by the right coppers.” The man adds something else in Italian; Phryne’s grasp of the language is rusty, but she gleans something along the lines of _getting some of our men into that precinct._ She’s thankful that Spade, for all that he is not the sharpest policeman, is at least a straight one.

“And you,” says the man to Louisa, “don’t think you’re going anywhere.” The sound of a body being shoved into furniture, and then Louisa pleading, “No, no, no - ” They all lean out of sight as a dark-haired woman with an apron emerges into the hallway and crosses to the stairs, a screaming baby in her arms. She has just disappeared from sight when the house is rocked by an explosion down the street.

It’s a small one, enough to shatter glass and shake the pictures loose from the walls but not any more damage than that. Arthur Shelby, right on time. Two men spill out of the sitting room, cursing, and rush out of the door. 

Jack swings briskly into the hallway and Phryne moves to cover him as he kicks open the sitting room door. “Don’t even think about it,” she says to the remaining man in the room, who is looming over Louisa with his hand reaching for his gun. She keeps her weapon trained on him as Jack disarms him and shoves him into a corner. “Is there anyone else upstairs?” she asks Louisa.

“Just Maria and the baby,” whispers Louisa. “Please, hurry.”

Jack hands Phryne the man’s gun and makes towards the stairs. “Be careful,” she mouths at him; hypocritical coming from her, which he acknowledges with a wryly arched brow. 

The seconds he is upstairs stretch out, long and awful. Louisa bites her lip so hard it bleeds. “Are you mad, Louisa?” the man in the corner hisses. “Do you know what Mr Sabini will do to you when he finds out?”

“Sabini’s lost it,” Louisa snarls back. “He’ll hurt us whatever we do. I’m sick of it, I’m sick of you all.”

“Quiet,” snaps Phryne. She can hear steps hurrying down the stairs, the baby crying again. Louisa rises with a moan, reaching for her son as Jack reappears with the squalling child in his arms, but she has barely crossed the room when the front door bursts open again. “In here, Vinnie!” yells the man in the corner.

Jack has the baby, he won’t get his weapon up in time, and so Phryne moves on instinct, sliding between him and the door as Vinnie comes through it, gun ready, and a shot rings out.

“Phryne?” she hears Jack say with naked fear in his voice. 

And then Vinnie is collapsing on the carpet, blood spurting from his hand, and Grace steps up to him and calmly kicks his gun away. Even in the white heat of her terror, Phryne can pause to admire the trajectory of the shot: straight through the meat of his palm. Phryne shoots past Grace, continues shooting as she strides out, keeping the other man pinned behind the hall furniture with her fire. “Phryne,” Jack calls again, and she turns and runs for the kitchen after Louisa and Grace as he covers her from the stairs. They pelt down the alley towards where Arthur is waiting at the wheel bellowing: “Come on!”

It’s a tight fit in the car. Phryne is pressed up against Jack, who is crammed against the door. She can feel the minute tremors wracking his body, and she reaches out to put her hand over his. When she looks up at him, there’s a gathering storm in his eyes.

“I’d say don’t ever do that again,” he murmurs, “but I doubt that would be of any use.”

It’s not the right place to have this conversation, not in a cramped car with too many guns and a screaming baby. But if there is one thing Phryne has learnt from all the tumult that has been their life together, it is that one could die waiting for perfect opportunities to present themselves.

“I’d do it again,” she says. “And so would you, in my place.”

Jack swallows. Phryne watches the long line of his throat work. “That’s how it is to be?”

“That’s how it’ll be,” she says. “Take it or leave it, Jack Robinson.”

“You know I can’t leave it.”

“I know,” she says, and turns her face into his shoulder. His fingers tighten around hers.

*

There was, in fact, no murder to begin with.

Louisa tells them so, cradling her baby - Tony, she calls him - in the crush of the car. Sabini had known about her job in the hotel, had leaned on Enzo to get her to watch the Macmillans. She had long wanted Enzo to leave the gang; when they gleaned her reluctance, they took the baby, for “safekeeping”.

“I listened in the corridor to you fighting,” she tells Grace. “I watched you leave. And then, while I was waiting, I heard the shot.”

There was nobody in the room. Only Clive Macmillan, lying on his bed with his brains blown out, the Colt in his hand.

“I called Enzo,” says Louisa, low and flat. “He came back with instructions. I was to take the gun, make it look like someone else had shot him. I added the cigarettes. Enzo was to plant the gun at the Primrose Hill house. I think they figured they’d get Tommy Shelby to take the fall, or if not, at least you - ” this to Grace “ - and that would have hurt him enough to distract him.”

She fumbles in her coat pocket and takes out a folded note. “I found this on the vanity, addressed to you. I was meant to destroy it. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Grace reads the note wordlessly. Then she crumples it in her fist and turns sharply away, pressing her hand over her mouth.

“I did kill him after all.” She has begun to shake, her body contracting helplessly and inexorably. “I should not have left him alone, I might as well have put the gun in his hand - ”

“No,” says Jack firmly. It startles them all, even him - a man who held on to his marriage for sixteen years, to a woman who broke her vows in less than two. But if he knows anything from living through a war that cracked the world, it is that if a thing is broken, it is not fixed by threatening to break yourself further. In his darkest moments he thought of using the war to keep Rosie with him, when she wanted her freedom; this is an ugly part of himself he has shown no one, neither her nor Phryne, and he is grateful that it has never seen light. Clive Macmillan has gone, and the knowledge he left Grace with has pulled her to the edge, but there is still time. “No,” he says again, gentler, “it was his choice to make.”

“I have done - ” and here Grace truly begins to weep “ - I have done terrible things to every man who has loved me, and I don’t know that I should be loved.”

“I’m sure they were terrible, and that’s on you to make your own peace with,” says Jack. “But you don’t owe anyone anything for their love. It’s given freely, or not at all.”

He can feel Phryne’s gaze upon him. He squeezes her hand, once, and feels the answering pressure of her fingers.

Grace has buried her face in her hands. The car trundles on fretfully through the rising fog of a London evening.

*

It is Ada who takes baby Tony from a reluctant Louisa at the station. “No harm will come to him in our care.”

“Do you swear on your word as a Shelby?”

Ada scoffs. “That’s not worth much to me. No - I swear it on my son’s head.”

Louisa bends to kiss Tony on the forehead. Then her face crumples as she lets Inspector Spade lead her away to take her statement.

“I hope they’ll be all right,” Phryne says to Jack. “I heard Sabini’s men talking about getting some of their own into this station.”

“I had a word with Spade about that.” Jack is angled against a pillar, surveying the bustle of the station. If it weren’t for his accent, he would look perfectly at home. “Enzo thinks he knows who they’ll send, but the precinct will take precautions anyway.”

“I am sorry - you’ve crossed three continents and you still can’t seem to get away from police work.”

Jack tucks his hands back in his pockets and gives her one of his wry smiles. “Well, the woman I followed, people keep dropping dead around her. So it’s not unexpected.”

It’s properly dark out by the time they release Tommy. He comes strolling out of lock-up looking no worse for wear than from a night out at the pub. Somewhere between the holding cell and the front door, he’s retrieved his cap and finagled a cigarette.

He goes first to Arthur, who grabs him in a one-armed hug and growls, “About fucking time", and then to Ada. “Is this the Ricci boy? Take him back to Primrose Hill, he’ll be safe there.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do with a baby,” says Ada dismissively, but she lets Tommy kiss her on the cheek. 

Tommy shakes Phryne’s hand. “Thank you,” he says soberly. He nods to Jack. “You’re all right for a copper, Robinson.”

“I wouldn’t make a habit of relying on it, Mr Shelby.”

“Mm,” says Tommy. Then, finally, he turns to Grace.

They study one another in silence for a while.

Tommy takes a drag on his cigarette. “Between the two of us, I think we’ve fucked things up proper, eh?”

Grace makes a queer sound, half laugh, half choked-up sob. “You could say that.”

“I didn’t know your husband,” Tommy continues. “I am sure he was a good man. But I am not, so I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.”

“Well, I am sorry,” says Grace bitterly. “For the whole sorry lot of it.”

“Even the baby?”

Grace rests a hand beneath her ribs, an involuntary motion. “I’ll never know if you came back for me only because of the baby.”

“Some time ago I was standing by a grave that had been dug for me,” says Tommy. “I say some time, but really it wasn’t all that long ago. Anyway, there I am, getting down on my knees by my own grave, and a man puts a gun to my head. And I see you, Grace. Clear as day on the moor. And I know then that if I do not die that day, I will come back for you. I will always come back for you.”

“And you did not die.”

“I am already dead,” says Tommy. “I died before I met you, in France. Everything since then has been borrowed time. Except in the brief moments when I’ve had you with me - then I've been able to believe myself living.”

Grace takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if we’re good together, Tommy.”

“That’s as may be,” says Tommy. “But we’re worse apart.” He stubs out his cigarette on the station brickwork. “All right, this is what we’ll do. I will attend to my business in London, and then we will go to New York and attend to your business there. And when the time is right, I will ask you. I know you like to be asked properly.”

Grace reaches out and takes his outstretched hand. “Happy or sad?”

“Happy, I think,” says Tommy. “For a change.”

Grace smiles through her tears. “We’ll try not to break any hearts.”

*

“I think it’s growing on me, London,” says Jack.

“Fancy that,” says Phryne. They are strolling along the Thames towards Temple. It is evening and cold out, but the wind is down and so for midwinter it is practically pleasant. “And all it took was some running around Clerkenwell and a bit of getting shot at.”

“You may have noticed,” says Jack, “but I am not very good at not working.”

Phryne feigns shock. “You don’t say.”

“Why’d you think I had so much leave to come after you?”

“You’ve only taken to London because it reminds you of policing. Jack, you incorrigible workaholic.”

“Quite. Anyway, it’s been impressed upon me of late that there are worse cities to be in. Birmingham, for one.”

“We have a standing invitation to visit Birmingham, you know. I understand they’d like us at the wedding, if Tommy ever manages to bring it off.”

“Heaven forfend I ever set foot in Birmingham,” says Jack. “If I see Thomas Shelby again, I don’t know if I’ll be able to resist arresting him, and I doubt that would end well for anyone. No, London will do very well for now.”

“I was just getting bored of London,” says Phryne. “I thought we might venture farther afield. Pop across the Channel, surprise Jane on her holidays. Then there’s the rest of the Continent for the taking. Only - ” Only there is Jack to think of now, she realises, and the thought is both solidifying and unsettling. Phryne as a rule does not take other people’s plans into consideration. She is only just discovering that it matters that she consider Jack’s. Her skin prickles, and not from the riverine chill.

Jack is watching her steadily. “Thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end where I begun.”

“What?” Phryne hazards a guess. “Is that Donne?”

Jack nods at the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, just visible from the riverbank. “He’s buried there. It caught my eye and the line came to mind.”

The poem is coming back to her. Twin compasses, and so on. “Does that make you the fixed foot?”

“Yes,” says Jack. “So, by all means, Miss Fisher: obliquely run.”

Phryne leans over and kisses him, taking her time about it, on the bank of the Thames. His face is cold, but his breath is warm in her mouth.

“Where do you want to go?” he asks.

She shuts her eyes, spins the wheel of the world to see what her mind settles on first. What she sees is her own parlour at Wardlow, the windows open to let in the breeze of a Melbourne summer night. The sounds of Mr Butler moving about the kitchen, Dot’s knitting in the armchair. Jack’s hat, hung up by the door.

“Home,” she says out loud. “I think I should like to go the long way round, if possible. But I’d like to go home.”

“Then we shall,” he says.

He gives her his arm and they continue into the evening, as the shadows of London deepen and the river turns into dark glass.

**Author's Note:**

> The Progressive Bookshop was a real bookshop at 68 Red Lion Street, run by the German anarchist Charles Lahr and his wife Esther Archer. It was one of the first British bookshops to distribute - illegally - the unexpurgated first edition of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. 
> 
> London gangland: Darby Sabini was born in Saffron Hill and ran his organisation out of Clerkenwell, so it stands to reason that Holborn would be where the Peaky Blinders would muscle in on his territory. Camden belongs to Alfie Solomons, of course.
> 
> Inspector Spade probably came about through word association via Inspector Bucket, from Charles Dickens' Bleak House - unrelatedly one of my favourite detectives of all time is Sam Spade from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon - but actually in my head, the inspector in this fic just looks like 1920s Lestrade. "Implacable weather" in the first section is a reference to a line in Bleak House's opening paragraph.
> 
> Jack quotes from John Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning: 
> 
> _If they be two, they are two so  
>  As stiff twin compasses are two;   
> Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show   
>  To move, but doth, if the other do. _
> 
> _And though it in the center sit,  
>  Yet when the other far doth roam,   
> It leans and hearkens after it,   
>  And grows erect, as that comes home. _
> 
> _Such wilt thou be to me, who must,  
>  Like th' other foot, obliquely run;   
> Thy firmness makes my circle just,   
>  And makes me end where I begun._
> 
> Imagine Phryne and Jack attending Tommy and Grace's insane wedding at Arrow House. Phryne and Polly obviously become fast friends. Phryne also counsels Lizzie to stop pursuing romantic dalliances with various gangsters and to further her professional prospects instead, resulting in Lizzie breaking it off with Angel Changretta of her own accord, which solves half the problems of Peaky Blinders S3 and all the problems of S4. Nobody murders anyone with Jack present, though he still does not enjoy this wedding. I don't think I'll ever write this sequel.


End file.
